Justice at Risk (27 page)

For several weeks, I waited. Waited for word from Cecile Chang and the information only she could give me. Waited for a change of heart and some help from Sergeant Felix Montego. Waited for enough time to pass so that I could take the blood test that might tell me something about my future, one way or the other.

Now that I was desperate for conclusions, desperate for time to speed up, it slowed to a maddening crawl.

A French notecard arrived from Maurice:

My dearest Benjamin,

As you can see, Fred and I have finally completed our journey to the heavenly City of Lights and the wonderfully kitschy Eiffel Tower. We climbed all the way to the top for the view, where we shared a long, smoldering kiss, just like Doris Day and Ray Bolger in
April in Paris
(or am I thinking of Audrey Hepburn and William Holden in
Paris When It Sizzles
?). Anyway, a nice lesbian couple from Sweden was kind enough to take the photograph I’ve waited so long for, and we obliged by snapping one of them. We’re having the time of our lives, taking long walks through the Louvre and along the Seine, with everything abloom, including our undying devotion to each other, which means more now than ever, with so much of our lives behind us rather than ahead. Fred has never been more romantic—well, at least not for a decade or two—and I’m rewarding him each morning with a pastry that’s definitely not on his diet, which we cut in half and share at a sidewalk table with our coffee, watching Paris come to life. Look for us to be home sometime in May, back to our little nest on Norma Place, where I trust you’re enjoying your own sweet spring, my dear one!

As ever, your ardent admirer, Maurice

I spent my days reading, working my way through the books Jacques had left me before he’d died, and my nights parked outside the Reptile Den, contemplating murder.

Each evening, I arrived about ten and parked half a block away, hunched down in the shadows, armed with one of Fred’s big fishing knives, the kind with the wide blade and serrated edge for serious slashing. I’d sit in the dark, listening to the frenzied syncopations of Thelonius Monk and Ornette Coleman on my tape deck, watching for Charlie Gitt to arrive, and when he did, wondering if it would be worth it to kill him—if it would feel as good as it did each night when I closed my eyes, going through the motions in my head, trying to find some sense of resolution, no matter how fanciful, so that I might steal a few hours’ sleep before the next light. I saw Gitt a number of times, late at night, arriving at the club in his black Jeep Cherokee. He was always alone, sometimes in tough guy leather garb, sometimes dressed like a construction worker, always with enough of his hard body showing to warn you who was boss. At some point, he had to be shown otherwise. I’d decided that much; I just hadn’t decided when or how.

Six weeks from the day he raped me, I drove to the Jeffrey Goodman Clinic at the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center. The building was located in a low-rent neighborhood just south of Hollywood Boulevard, on Rand Schrader Boulevard, a street named in honor of the first openly gay appointed judge, an old friend who had died from AIDS complications fairly early in the epidemic. I took the elevator to the second floor, filled out forms with code numbers that guaranteed anonymity, as I’d done half a dozen times before over the years. I sat through an AIDS and HIV information film I’d seen previously and talked once again to a counselor; when he asked me, among his many required questions, if I’d recently engaged in unprotected anal sex, I simply answered yes. My blood was drawn, and I was told to come back in one week for the results, although I was warned that it could be several more months before my body began to develop antibodies to the virus, which the test was designed to detect.

When I arrived back on Norma Place, I found Templeton’s Infiniti parked at the curb in front of the house, under the star-shaped leaves of a California sycamore. I pulled into the drive, listening to the gravel crunch as I slowly braked, realizing what a quiet afternoon it was. I sat for a while, not sure I wanted to see Templeton, not sure I wanted to face her insistent questions. Finally, I got out and went into the house. When I didn’t find her there, I poked my head out the back door and looked around the yard. At the end of the drive, to the right of the double garage doors, her big handbag hung by its strap over the post at the bottom of the stairs. At the top, the door to the apartment was open behind a closed screen.

I mounted the stairs quietly and looked in.

Templeton was on the big bed, naked. Peter Graff, also naked, was on top of her. Her long brown legs were wrapped around his waist, and her fingers were thrust into the mass of golden curls at his neck. Each time he thrust his hips, his butt tightened, creating twin dimples in the smooth cheeks, but his stroke was as gentle, as considerate of her as it was strong. Their beauty, dark and light, supple and powerful, the wild freedom yet perfect cadence of their movements, the way they fit together so snugly, all of it was simply dazzling. My head grew light as I stood spying on them, listening to their cries and murmurs. Their sounds joined and rose like a lifting chorus, a lovely keening fused by the sensation they shared, and the muscles of Peter’s legs and butt became corded and pronounced as he thrust into her more quickly, while Templeton cried out for more, her hands on his buttocks now as she arched upward and pulled him more deeply into her. I turned away and went back down.

I was sitting on the front porch, scratching Maggie’s head, when I heard the screen door open, and turned to see them coming out of the house. They had both showered, and their hair was damp; Templeton had slipped into a fresh sweat suit of Peter’s, and looked lost and adorable in it. He sat on the railing at a distance, in gym shorts and a T-shirt, while Templeton slid in beside me on the hanging swing.

“I’ve missed you, Benjamin.”

“I went AWOL for a while.”

“Peter’s missed you too.”

“How’s Harry?”

“He’s been moved to a convalescent home in the Fairfax district. Melissa Zeigler took care of it. Thanks for calling her. She’s been a godsend.”

“I haven’t been too reliable, I’m afraid.”

On the floorboards of the old porch, Maggie shifted in her sleep and treaded air with her paws, as if chasing cats in her dreams. Templeton took my hand.

“Peter and I slept together this afternoon.”

“I know.”

She smiled, sweetly and sadly at the same time.

“You always know so much, don’t you?”

“Never as much as I’d like.”

“Are you angry with us—with me?”

I shook my head.

“I came by looking for you, Ben. You weren’t here. Peter was.”

“Serendipity, I think they call it.”

“I needed someone, Ben. Someone to hold me. Someone who wouldn’t shut me out.”

“You don’t have to apologize, Alexandra.”

“I’m not apologizing. I’m explaining.”

A hummingbird buzzed under the porch, suspended itself in space for a few seconds, then zipped away. Templeton watched it go, then turned back to me.

“Are you going to visit Harry?”

“No. Not now, anyway. Not for a while.”

“Are you going to tell me why?”

“I have some things to sort out first. Private stuff.”

“That’s it?”

“I’d like to leave it at that, if it’s all the same.”

I motioned Peter to join us on the swing. Templeton made room between us, and when Peter sat, we slipped our arms around him, and then we laughed all at once, as if on cue. He kissed me on the cheek, and Templeton the same way. Then he sat back, pushing the swing with his bare feet, rocking the three of us gently.

A breeze whispered across the porch, and through the leaves that draped the house. Templeton lifted her nose to the air, and the sweet scent of a blooming jasmine vine that Maurice had planted long before she was born.

“I love spring,” she said, “more than any other time.”

Out on the street, a black Jeep Cherokee drove toward the house. The driver slowed almost to a stop as he passed, staring hard in our direction. I recognized him instantly, even behind his angular dark glasses, and it was obvious to me that he wanted me to see him. I might have been wrong, but I felt certain his eyes were fixed more on Peter than on me. Peter recognized him too.

“Isn’t that Charlie Gitt?”

Gitt hit the gas pedal and sped away while I kept silent, lulled by the rhythm of the swing, unwilling to disturb the quiet, the blessed peace.

Late that evening, after I’d grabbed some dinner with Templeton and Graff at Boy Meets Grill, I went for a long hike in the hills. It had been a few weeks, and it felt good to test my muscles again, to feel my body carrying its weight, as I sought to reassure myself that the organism was intact, alive, functioning properly.

By the time I came back down, a wind had kicked up, chilling the moonless night, shivering the trees. The neighborhood was characteristically quiet, and as I approached the house, I heard little more than the leaves rustling and my own footsteps striking their persistent pattern along the sidewalk. Then, just as I turned up the front walk, something inside the dark house caught my attention.

A curtain moved at the edge of the front window, as if someone had been waiting. I kept my eyes on the window, saw no more movement, nothing to suggest I was being watched. It might have been a dervish of air slipping through the drafty old house, a mischievous breeze touching the edge of the curtain like a human hand, before letting go and moving on. But caution seemed a wise course.

I altered my path, cutting across the small yard to the gravel drive, where I made some quick observations. Templeton’s Infiniti was gone. Peter’s VW bug was parked at the curb. I saw no other cars that I recognized, except my own in the driveway. Above the garage in back, the lights in the apartment were out. Other than a front porch light, and another light fixed high over the driveway, the house was pitched in darkness.

Under the front seat of the Mustang, I found the big fishing knife with the jagged edge where I’d kept it handy on my nightly vigils outside the Reptile Den. Maggie was asleep on the patio and never stirred as I passed. I opened the broken back door soundlessly and stepped inside.

From the kitchen, across the living room, I could see the curtains where I had noticed movement, covering the front windows. I moved silently through the kitchen and into the living room before I stopped. To the right, across the room, the curtains of a smaller window, one that looked out on the drive, were drawn open. In the faint light, a figure stood in silhouette, as slender as a surgeon’s scalpel.

“You should fix that back door, Ben.”

“I’ve been meaning to.”

Cecile Chang stepped away from the window, to the center of the room. She glanced at the big knife as I laid it on an end table, just visible at the outer reaches of the remote light.

“You were expecting someone else?”

“You never know.”

“Or perhaps you’re tempted to use the knife on me.”

I wasn’t in the mood for jokes, if that was what it was, so I said nothing.

“Oree came to see me. About the secret I’ve been keeping.”

“Only one, Cecile?”

“Plural, then. Secrets. Is that better?”

“More accurate at least.”

“Oree seems to feel that my deception has caused you to get into some kind of trouble.”

“Some kind of trouble, yes.”

“Deep trouble was actually the way he expressed it.”

“Closer to the truth.”

“If not very specific.”

“Did you come to play word games, Cecile? If so, you can use the front door on your way out.”

“You’re not happy with me, I know that.”

“I’m tired of your games, Cecile. All of them.”

“Oree was quite upset with me as well. With the pretense I’ve kept up all these years. He was quite hurt by that.”

“I can imagine.”

“He urged me to come see you, Ben. To talk more openly. Oree’s a very good person. He likes you quite a lot, you know.”

“That could change, when he gets to know me better.”

“Do you mind if I smoke?”

“No.”

A match flared, briefly illuminating the delicate features of her face. Then the shadows consumed her again.

“It’s not easy, Ben. The transgender life.”

“I imagine not.”

“I’m sure you’ve heard the clichés, the generalizations—that transsexuals are men or women who feel trapped in the wrong body. That transgender men feel like women inside, that we identify with women emotionally, and need a woman’s body to feel complete.”

“Yes, I’ve heard all that.”

“It only scratches the surface of who we are, and what we feel. It’s impossible to explain it to someone who’s never felt the same, never shared the experience. Impossible to make rational the notion that you want to completely alter your body, change your sex, through surgery and chemicals.”

“I do have some problems with it, though I don’t claim to understand everything.”

“You can imagine, then, how difficult it is for the straight world to accept what we feel compelled to do. To accept us as we need to be.”

“Is that what you want, Cecile? Acceptance from the straight world? Assimilation into mainstream life? If so, you seem to have done rather well for yourself.”

Her long, slim cigarette glowed as she drew on the burning tobacco.

“Is that meant as an insult?”

“I’m not sure.”

“I’ve done my best to build a life for myself the only way I knew how.”

“You’ve lied to a lot of people, Cecile. You’ve hurt a lot of people. Your brother, Franklin, for one, who’s desperate to know what’s become of you. Oree, for another, who gave you his friendship. Certainly Tiger Palumbo, when she finds out.”

The cigarette glowed again, and Chang began to pace the room.

“Are you going to be the messenger of bad tidings, Ben?”

“I hadn’t planned on it.”

“You feel I should be the one.”

“That’s your business. Deception inevitably causes pain, to everyone involved. The longer it goes on, the more damage it does.”

“You think I’ve used Tiger, don’t you? Used her to put in place the last missing piece of my rearranged life.”

“That sounds more like a confession than a question.”

“Let me correct a misconception that you might have, Ben, you and countless others. Many people assume that with the right surgery and a good support group, a transsexual’s life changes for the better. All those well-meaning but simplistic talk shows parading their supposedly happy transgender role models—they offer a terrible distortion of the truth. Nine out of ten people who undergo gender reassignment are miserable for all kinds of reasons, and many never get better. They bring with them enormous emotional baggage to begin with, frequently terrible childhood abuse, obviously deep sexual identity conflicts. Many fantasize that having their male organs refigured to female and growing a pair of breasts is going to give them instant self-esteem and inner peace, to make them suddenly whole.”

Her back was to me, but she kept talking.

“But it doesn’t work that way, not for most. And it’s never easy, not for a single one of us. The emotional pain, the social rejection, are immeasurable.”

“Then why do it?”

She whirled on me.

“Because we have to! Because this is what we are!”

“And how have you managed to adjust so well, Cecile, when so many others have such a hard time of it? Besides passing yourself off as a lesbian, I mean.”

She glanced at a rattan chair.

“May I sit?”

“Of course.”

She seated herself in the soft cushions, crossing one leg over the other, dangling a high heel, smoothing down her tight skirt. I sat at the end of the couch nearest her, facing her across the coffee table.

“Whatever lies I’ve told, whatever truth I’ve left unspoken, it was to survive.”

“When exactly did the lies start?”

“The first lie a transgender person understands is that we are not what we appear to be on the outside, to others. The flip side of that is the truth we know about ourselves, or at least sense, on the inside. But in this world, where gender roles are so rigidly defined and enforced, with so little room for humanity and diversity, our inner truth is at constant war with the lie outside. It causes transgender children untold confusion and grief. Our sense of reality, of self, becomes terribly fractured.”

“How did you survive, Cecile? As a child, I mean.”

“The first relief we have, at least in my case, is to experiment secretly with our mother’s clothes. Then with the makeup, and the hair. I first tried it as a young teenager. I can tell you, the freedom I felt was exhilarating beyond anything I’d expected. I was a completely different person in women’s clothes; my personality and character, the way I spoke and carried myself, changed completely. I was myself, at last. As I got older, I became only more certain of that.”

“Yet you continued to live a heterosexual life.”

“I loved women, Ben. I was sexually attracted to them. Never men. I realize that makes me an anomaly, but that’s how it is.”

“So marrying was not such a problem.”

“I was the first son in a traditional Chinese family. It was expected of me. Anything else was unthinkable.”

“You and your wife had normal sexual relations?”

“Under the circumstances. It was a marriage arranged by our parents, between the families. There was affection but no passion, no ‘heat,’ as they like to say. I cared for my wife, but there was always a distance, an artificiality born of so much pretense.”

“You were never able to share your secret with her, then.”

“Not with anyone. I could never be myself, except with strangers who were like me.”

“And with the mirror.”

“The mirror can be as cold as it is clear. A lonely place in which to dwell.”

“So you lived a double life, playing the dutiful husband and son on the one hand, and the adventurous cross-dresser on the other.”

“I never went out in women’s clothes looking for men. I only went out to be seen in natural dress and makeup, like other women. To be myself for a few precious hours. Is that so much to ask?”

She took a long drag on the cigarette, then looked around for an ashtray that wasn’t there.

“You’ll have to use the sink. In the kitchen. I can turn on a light if you’d like.”

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

“You prefer the shadows?”

“They can be comforting at times.”

She got up and crossed the room, her heels tapping neatly across the hardwood floor. I heard the faucet being turned on, and the sizzle as she doused her cigarette. When she returned, she had a saucer with her, which she placed on the coffee table. She sat opposite me at the other end of the sofa, draping a slim arm and set of bracelets along the back.

“It’s much easier talking to you than I expected, Ben. You’re leading me along quite skillfully.”

“It’s my background, I suppose. My training.”

“Yes, of course.”

“As long as we’re moving forward so smoothly, why don’t you tell me about the night of April fourteenth, in Hollywood, fifteen years ago.”

She crooked her elbows, and joined her hands, weaving her fingers together, the long painted nails blood red against her alabaster skin.

“It really all comes back to that night, doesn’t it? All that’s happened.”

“Just about.”

“The weather was pleasant that evening, warm but with a nice breeze, and almost a full moon. My wife had planned a visit with her sister for a few days. I was to have the apartment all to myself. We had separate closets, in different rooms. Inside my closet, I’d constructed a secret compartment where I kept my female things. My wife was away rarely, but I waited for those times the way one anticipates a holiday or vacation. In my mind, I lived for those opportunities to dress up and go out. That night, after she’d gone, I took a great deal of time with my makeup and hair, two hours or more, until I looked, well, acceptable.”

“You’ve been blessed with good features.”

“I was slim, as I am now, and had almost no beard, even back then, long before I began taking estrogen. It was much easier for me to pass than many cross-dressing men.”

“So you went out, to Hollywood.”

“I wanted to be where there were lots of people. Also, where I knew I’d see other men like me, wearing women’s attire. I wanted to compare myself to them, to affirm my own attractiveness, my ability to pass. I had coffee, then went window-shopping along the boulevard and looked at the famous names in the stars along the sidewalk. I stayed in the busiest section, where it was well lighted and I felt safe.”

She paused to take a deep breath and steady herself.

“Then I noticed a car passing slowly, with two men inside, staring at me. They were in regular clothes, but it appeared to be an undercover car. I suspected they were policemen, they just had that look about them. I became quite rattled and kept walking, keeping my eyes straight ahead.”

“This was in the area near the Egyptian Theater?”

“Yes, across the street. I remember it quite well, because the theater was in a deteriorated state at that time. It might even have been boarded up, I’m not sure. When the same car came by again, a minute or two later, I became frightened. When it had gone by, I quickly crossed the boulevard and hurried down a side street. It was foolish to act that way, but I was desperately afraid of being exposed. You can’t even imagine the terror of that, particularly back in those days.”